


The Mark of an Invisible Man

by linman



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-03
Updated: 2010-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:06:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linman/pseuds/linman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lindsey's looking for an opportunity.  Ethan's happy to give it to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mark of an Invisible Man

**Author's Note:**

> Acknowledgments: [](http://hedda62.livejournal.com/profile)[**hedda62**](http://hedda62.livejournal.com/) and [](http://kivrin.livejournal.com/profile)[**kivrin**](http://kivrin.livejournal.com/), my lovely betas. [](http://antennapedia.livejournal.com/profile)[**antennapedia**](http://antennapedia.livejournal.com/), for running this ficathon and being of such timely help when I need it.  
> Written for: [](http://estepheia.livejournal.com/profile)[**estepheia**](http://estepheia.livejournal.com/) in the [Ethan Rayne ficathon](http://antennapedia.livejournal.com/275193.html?style=mine).
> 
> This story depicts explicit sex with dubious consent.

The shop looked nothing like a site of power. Its seedy, unclean windows looked out on an equally seedy, unclean street in a town left by some forgotten tide out of the stream of human custom that fed L.A. It was still California, though, and that in itself was enough to make Lindsey McDonald nervous.

Before he could change his mind, he stepped forward to open the door and ease quietly inside.

There was a faint hint of dust on all the merchandise, but it wasn't dust Lindsey smelled. His senses quickening, he cast his gaze over the faded costumes, the salacious gag gifts, the drooping silkscreened T-shirts with their feebly-rebellious slogans. After a moment he began to wonder whether he had really sensed magic, or if he had been anticipating the sensation so long that he had merely imagined it. He dug the wrinkled slip of paper out of his jeans pocket and consulted it, uselessly. Yes, this was the place.

At the back of the store he found the cashier's counter, behind which reposed an indolent clerk whose face was obscured by a magazine. Lindsey approached without bothering to be quiet, but though he suspected the clerk had heard him, the man made no move to receive him, keeping his feet on the chair stacked high with faded paperbacks. Once Lindsey had reached the counter, however, he slowly lowered the dog-eared mag and fixed him with a gently unwelcoming stare.

"Uh," he stammered after a moment, "I'm, uh, lookin' for a man."

The man did not change expression, but innuendo passed over Lindsey like a wave, taking his balance with it. But he had not been mistaken about the magic. Casting caution to the wind, he added, "I've got a job needs done."

"That," the man said, "is moderately obvious."

He wasn't the clerk after all, and Lindsey was glad he had not spoken to him like one: if the thoughtful gimlet stare hadn't convinced him, the accent did—British and hard as braided whipcord. With a sense of relief at having got to the point of business, Lindsey braced a careful elbow on the counter and leaned in. "Are you Ethan Rayne?"

The man raised an eyebrow, a gesture silent as silk. "Depends who's asking. Who are you?"

"McDonald. Lindsey McDonald. I…."

He stopped.

Rayne said evenly: "Well, McDonald Lindsey McDonald, whoever you are, you are in way over your head. Good day to you." And with a superb economy of motion, he raised his magazine again.

Lindsey didn't back off. If it were Angel doing this, he'd have batted away the mag with a motion equally economic and got straight down to brass tacks. He wasn't Angel, but he didn't need to be, for this.

"Tell me something new," he said quietly.

Rayne lowered the mag again. "Something new?" he repeated, with faint scorn. "I am not in the business of new things."

"That's what I hear," Lindsey said, before he could move the mag. "That's why I came."

"I'm not in the business of hearsay, either," Rayne said.

"Are you in business at all?"

A dangerous gambit, but it appeared not to lose him anything. "Not particularly," Rayne said.

Lindsey said nothing, but waited. The mage's eyes met his, effortlessly probing.

"Pique my interest," Rayne said finally.

Lindsey paused, then dropped a single word like a rare coin.

"Revenge."

A slow smile crept up the wiry face, not precisely mirthless, but of a mirth unshared. "Ah, revenge," he murmured. "An elixir best enjoyed for its own sake. Justice tends to cut the flavor."

"Well, good," Lindsey said. "I don't give a shit about justice."

Ethan Rayne lifted his chin, eyes bright. "Then I believe we can do business."

 

*

 

"I need a spell to make me invisible," Lindsey said. "Protection."

As he spoke, the mage lifted his scuffed oxfords from the pile of paperbacks, sending three of them to the floor, and got to his feet, tossing the magazine down to join them. He was as wiry as his face and as potentially quick as his eyes, though something—age, perhaps—held him in reserve. He wore a neatly-buttoned silk shirt that Lindsey had taken for black but now held a green-purple sheen in the meager daylight; the sleeves were rolled in a style that looked like it had been arrested in the eighties. A faint thread of grey disturbed the uniform nondescript wave of his hair.

"From whom?" Rayne inquired.

Lindsey took a deep breath. "From Wolfram &amp; Hart."

"Ah." Rayne tilted his head back and regarded him with a shade more interest, and a touch of pity. Lindsey was nettled. "How do you know such a thing is possible?" Rayne went on.

"I don't," Lindsey said bluntly. "You tell me."

Rayne's thoughtful glance took in his eyes, his face, the drape of his faded flannel shirt and the edge of the tank he wore under it, then the lines of his hand where it rested on the scratched glass of the counter. "Yes," he said finally, "it is possible. Though there is no spell that is infallible—you can still buy yourself plenty of time, if you're not a fool. There's no point in a fool donning camouflage."

"I'll take that under advisement," Lindsey said.

The lawyer's diction brought the mage's eyes back to his. "Who sent you here?" Rayne said, and his accent had gone totally unyielding.

Lindsey had been expecting to have to give that information up, but still he hesitated. "Her name is Eve," he said finally.

Rayne relaxed into the half-mirthless smile again. "Ah. That little minx. Playing both sides against the middle, is she? She has rather a talent for that. Fortunately I've already paid my debt to her, or we'd be having a very different conversation."

"What debt?"

"She got me out of a tight place once." He waved a dismissive hand. "At any rate, I can afford to assist a protégé of hers. But," and here he smiled unpleasantly, "it'll cost you."

"I can pay," Lindsey said.

"So like an American. I wasn't talking of money; though it will cost you that, too."

"….Okay," Lindsey said.

"Right then," Ethan Rayne said, and held out a supple hand.

Lindsey took it, and they shook; but the man, instead of releasing him, kept possession of his hand and turned it over to study. "Wolfram &amp; Hart knows you, I see," he said; "your hands don't match."

"No," Lindsey said briefly, and tried unsuccessfully to remove his hand from Rayne's grip.

"Yes," Rayne murmured, eyes on Lindsey's palm, "this presents a very entertaining challenge." He let go of him, and smiled again. "Very entertaining. Well then. Let's get started."

 

*

 

Lindsey followed Rayne down the darkened passage behind the counter, wiping his sweaty hands unobtrusively on his jeans. The man ahead of him walked with a slight limp, but there was no doubt in Lindsey's mind that he could move quickly if he needed to. They came out into a room considerably warmer than the shop, lit by an anglepoise lamp over a paper-heaped desk and a candle set behind a large quartz ball on a shelf. The dim light picked out a heavy, waist-high table of some dark-stained wood, a surrounding clutter of books and merchandise, and a large shelf bearing a collection of glass jars.

The hairs rose on Lindsey's arms and nape.

"Mr. Rayne—"

"Please," said the mage silkily, "call me Ethan. Everyone does." He turned round with a large, battered book in his hand. "Now. I shall give you a basic description of what will happen to make this working successful."

Lindsey swallowed the words he'd already forgotten, and nodded.

"Camouflage is the best description for the way it works. I will mark you; and you will mark the place of sanctuary you will choose. The marks will absorb all magical detection. It is up to you, of course, to look after the non-magical methods of detection."

"Right," Lindsey said.

"The most important thing—" Ethan smiled— "is to mind whom you trust."

Lindsey jerked a nod.

Ethan opened a metal TV-dinner stand and set upon it a tray with two jars of spirits and one of a black liquid-like substance, and a collection of wicked-looking needles. "Take off your clothing and lay it over the chair," he instructed, leafing through the book.

"Excuse me?"

"You did hear me say I was going to mark you?" Ethan inquired mildly, without looking up.

"Yes."

"Well, then. Take off your clothing and lie down on the table."

Lindsey put his hand to the buttons of his shirt and began to work them undone. "Tattoos," he said, uncertainly.

"Oh not merely tattoos, of course." Ethan went to the shelf of jars and opened one to sniff. "They'll be imbued with a number of magical agents. One of them being an essential fluid from you."

Lindsey relaxed grimly and shucked off his shirt. Of course it would involve blood; things like this always did. He was on familiar ground now. He unbuttoned his jeans and let them drop.

Naked, he clambered awkwardly onto the table and sat upon it, with his hands braced on the smooth wood and his legs drawn up.

Ethan looked up. "Ah yes. Yes, I think I'll mark you in front first. Lie back while I fasten the restraints."

Lindsey obeyed. When his head was resting on the hard wood, he set his jaw and said, "I'm not afraid of pain."

"Good," Ethan said. Apparently he did not take Lindsey's meaning that he did not need restraining, for he pulled an elastic strap through a slot and fastened it firmly in the crook of his arm, then repeated the action with the other.

Lindsey was now a patient; and he felt it thoroughly, as Ethan brought over the anglepoise lamp and arranged its light to shine upon his torso. "Ah, youth," he murmured, casting a long, satisfied glance over the length of Lindsey's body. "How invincible and how fleeting!" He disappeared with a smile, but a moment later he came back, and the smile was gone.

"Now," Ethan said, his face shadowed above him. He brought his hands together in a fluid gesture and closed his eyes. His lips moved silently: Lindsey's skin prickled at the rise of magic in the room. The light changed; more fluent, more sharp, it soaked him and left him with no secrets. A brief panic seized him and he moved his arms, flexing against the restraints; but he forced himself to lie still again and fixed his gaze on the ceiling.

Ethan moved once more; Lindsey felt his graceful presence at his left side, and then a clever hand, with a pen-like utensil in its grip, came into the light over his chest and touched his skin.

The magic in the room had sharpened his senses, and so while Lindsey had not lied when he said he wasn't afraid of pain, he nevertheless shut his teeth on a gasp at the first touch of the stylus. He smoothed his breathing with an effort and lay back to wait for it to be over.

But after a while he lost all track of waiting. He had never done anything at all, it seemed, but lie here while the mage with the sharp dark eyes pierced his skin to mark him. Above the rim of the anglepoise lamp Lindsey could see the wiry face in the shadows, fixed hard with concentration, a sheen of sweat at his temples. Every now and again there was a break in the needling pain as Ethan withdrew; after a while Lindsey grew aware that the man had removed both shirt and undershirt in the warmth of the room, and the arms that moved in and out of the light were bare and corded with hard sinew and muscle.

He could not see the marks which grew upon him, but he could feel the fire of them: a collar of tingling lay over his breast and trailed over arms and down past his solar plexus. The movement was directing itself now toward his thighs, though Ethan had not reached there yet: Lindsey curled and uncurled his toes with anticipation.

The pain did reach there, at last, in smooth downward strokes punctuated by sharp anchoring pierces. Lindsey breathed faster; but then the momentum suddenly broke.

The sound of a metal object falling with a rattle to the tray; then a jiggle and swing of the lamp away from him. Then Ethan's hand, infinitely gentle and not the least bit trustworthy, cradling under his head and lifting it.

"Refreshment," he said, touching Lindsey's lips with the rim of a small cup.

Lindsey had no idea what he was drinking, but its coldness shocked him into awareness that he too had been sweating; his long hair was damp against Ethan's fingers and he moved to find himself sticking to the table. He swallowed the sweet liquid until there was no more; then the cup was taken away and a folded towel placed under his head.

Now he could see. His skin was transformed into a canvas of black sigils: they looked like desecrations, and he knew the brief panic again. But presently his notice lit on something else, and the panic fell away to make room for curiosity.

His cock lay nestled between his marked thighs, dark and slightly swollen; and he wondered whether he'd passed through a sexual climax without noticing it.

"No," Ethan said, his silky voice uncanny in the dimness, "you haven't come. Yet."

"Yet?" Lindsey's voice cracked on the single word.

"That's next. The essential fluid. Remember."

_Not_ blood, then. Lindsey let his head and his gaze fall back. "Oh right."

When Ethan spoke again, his amused tones rankled. "The fatalism is a nice touch."

"Up yours," Lindsey croaked, shutting his eyes.

"I fear I'll have to decline," Ethan replied. He sounded as if he really regretted it. Which should not have been arousing at all.

Eyes still shut, Lindsey heard a small husky sound that he recognized for the other man's laugh, which only made matters worse.

"Yes," came the man's murmur from above him. "Very entertaining. Really, my dear boy, I ought to thank you."

"So I don't have to pay you then?" Lindsey said tightly. He kept waiting for Ethan to touch him, but moments slipped past and all he felt was the man's presence nearby, radiating magic.

"Oh, you'll pay me. You'll want to," Ethan said.

The mage was, maddeningly, still not touching him. Unspeakable need rose in every fiber of Lindsey's magic-struck body, and still Ethan did not touch him. He breathed faster, sweating again, a hot sheen over all his skin: it came to him that Ethan's power was great to inspire so much by mere suggestion. He heard his own voice give way in a small drawn-out moan.

"It's not as fun if you don't open your eyes," Ethan said.

The last thing he wanted was to see, but even as he thought it Lindsey opened his eyes and looked. His gaze caught focus first on Ethan's hand, outstretched over his solar plexus, uncannily steady as Lindsey trembled. Below the skim of Ethan's hand, Lindsey saw poised in the fingers of his other hand a cup—it looked like the same cup he'd drunk from—ready and waiting near the rigid strain of his erection.

As he watched, Ethan's hand came down to within an inch of his burning skin and passed slowly downward, downward, and a cry made it out past Lindsey's set teeth, and then Ethan was milking him into the cup and he was helplessly releasing everything, everything….

When he came to himself, panting, he found Ethan anointing him with a wet mixture from a crystal bowl. After a moment he set down the bowl. "There, that's the front done," he said. "Now for the back."

"I'm not finished," Lindsey uttered, as Ethan released him from the restraints so he could turn over on the table.

His words could have been taken to mean incredulity, but Ethan answered his true thought. "Oh, no. You won't be till it's come full circle. Don't worry, you'll be satisfied with the finish….Ah. I think you must be made of stronger stuff, Lindsey McDonald. The last young man I attempted to do this for made a run for it at this point."

So saying, he fastened Lindsey back down, his touch impersonal.

Lindsey felt exhausted, but he knew the magic wouldn't let him sleep. Still, it seemed to be enough to rest with his eyes closed and his cheek on the towel while Ethan rearranged the lamp and took up the stylus once more.

He opened his eyes after a while and lay, gaze unfocused, and watched Ethan dance in and out of his range of vision. The nameless urge lay waiting in abeyance within him as the prickling pain traced its way over his back and shoulders, as the sheen of sweat rose again on Ethan's seasoned skin, as the darkness cocooned him. He began to feel oddly light, and as the time passed it occurred to him that it must be the weight of surveillance lifting.

"Yes," Ethan said, "it's working. Don't let it go to your head."

Lindsey appreciated the warning, but he had never felt so giddily powerful, and he wanted to enjoy it. He shut his eyes and grinned.

After some time it came to him that Ethan was no longer marking him. He opened his eyes: the stylus lay abandoned on the rag, the urn of ink nearly completely depleted next to it. Then he realized that the mage was stroking his skin, up and down and all along, with a motion that was no longer in the least impersonal.

"Do you know," he said wistfully, "how long it's been since I did a sexual working of this magnitude? How time does fly, to be sure."

Lindsey felt a magnanimous pleasure rise from his marrow, pleasure and desire mixed, and he knew it was not purely his own doing, and he didn't care.

He submitted, purring, as the man lifted his waist in a strong, wiry arm and slipped a cushion under him; as from between his eyelashes he saw him undo his dark, slim trousers and let them drop; as the table creaked slightly under Ethan's added weight. A hard shiver went deep through him as the clever hands stroked his buttocks and parted them, a shiver that turned to a strong, dark shudder which intensified rather than subsiding. Magic and friction together seared him; Ethan's hard-sinewed arms anchored themselves against his sides, palms flat on the table half under him, and they moved as one, solid male effort, each thrust more perfect than the last.

The synapse of light broke, and Lindsey thought one thought of utter clarity before the finish took him: _This is what revenge feels like. Oh, it's gonna be good._

And with a cry he collapsed into the darkness.

 

*

 

And then Ethan was unbinding him, and Lindsey was getting up, stiff and aching in every fiber, and sliding his bare feet down to the floor, covered now in the camouflage that absorbed his burden. Ethan was tying a long, dark robe around himself; he turned as Lindsey glanced round to where his clothes lay tumbled forgotten on the desk chair.

"There's just one thing more," he said, arresting Lindsey in his faint gesture toward his jeans. "I must give you the incantation." He stepped closer and picked up the crystal bowl. "It can't be spoken aloud."

"Then how—" Lindsey cleared his throat— "can it be an in—"

Ethan put the bowl to his lips and took a mouthful of the potion inside. Then he took Lindsey's jaws in his hands and kissed him. Lindsey felt the other man's tongue stroke his, felt the tang deepen past taste to knowledge.

Ethan released him; stepped back; then brought his hands together in a clap far thunderous than human hands could make, and darkness rippled, striking him blind as it passed.

 

*

 

Lindsey was walking steadily along the highway. He was sore, and tired, and filled with malicious pleasure. Under his shirt and tank rode the black designs that protected him: the memory of how he had acquired them was rapidly dimming, but it didn't matter; they were his now, his, both the power and the knowledge.

They were going to be so sorry.

 

*

 

With great satisfaction Ethan Rayne sat down at the desk, still clad only in his robe, and stabbed a plastic fork into a microwave pot-pie. Even hours after the fact, his body felt charged and rejuvenated; it was always so after a good working. He ate his pot-pie and savored the damp scent of sex still lingering in the air.

Afterward he pushed away the empty paper bowl and reached for a deck of cards that lay half-toppled at the side of the desk. He bowed and shuffled them in hands that had grown sore and stiff after hours—a day and a half, though he doubted the boy knew it—of fine and tedious work. The cards fell, supple with use, in repeated ruffling snaps under his hands. He pressed them to his lips briefly, giving them the power he'd taken from the potion, and laid them in a formation of his own making.

For a silent moment he studied them, catching glimpses of images in his mind's eye: a blond vampire, a dank flat, an ominously peaceful suburban house, a curl of cigarette smoke. "Oh dear," he said finally. "Poor young devil. Well, it's hardly surprising."

He gathered up the cards again and laid them down in a neat stack.

Invisible or not, it was probably a good time to get out of California.

*

finis


End file.
